Addressing a Press Conference after the weekly media briefing on Cabinet decisions by the State Minister for Information Affairs Sameera bin Rajab Dr Mirza revealed that the electricity generation reached 4000MW a day against the consumption of 3200MW a day, surplus of 800MW. The Minister said an additional 600MW can be made available from the GCC Electricity Grid in case of need.
The Minister said the outage due to the transmission system anywhere in the country won’t be ruled out. “We have some very old areas such as Isa Town which still has the cable system put in place about 50 years ago. In such chances of outage can be reduced through precautions such as adopting measures to avoid overloading the cable supply system and energy conservation steps announced by the Ministry,” he added.
Dr Mirza said that the MEW was also utilising the financial resources worth BD40 million sets aside by the government to bolster the existing old cable network across the Kingdom.
The Minister while explaining the three main functions i.e. Production, Transfer and Distribution of electricity said that each segment has been taken care of according the highest levels of perfection by sustaining the key performance indicators.
“We are receiving electricity from three major power generation plants run by the private sector Al Hidd, Al Ezzel and Al Dur Power Plants. In addition the public sector power plants are located in Riffa and Sitra areas, taking the total number of plants to five,” Dr Mirza said.
“From the power generation plant, the electricity is transmitted to the different areas through nationwide distribution called substations. We had added 15 distribution plants in 2012 and in first six months EWA has added 10 substations and equal number is expected by the close of the year,” the Minister said.
The Ministry of EWA, the Minister said, will continue to create awareness about energy conservation as part of efforts to help consumers to adopt healthy habits while using essentials like electricity and water.
In addition, the EWA has put in place swift response to rectify the complaints in minimum possible time which is backed a 24X7 Call Centre and the each complaint of a consumer follows a brief on the nature of the fault, time to fix etc. by the Call Centre.
“We have boosted the respond capacity at minimal level as EWA has established three Emergency Centres in each one in Muharraq, Manama and Riffa replacing the old system of working from one centre. These centers have been backed by 340 technical staff which helps to rectify the complaints by fixing problems on ground quickly,” the Minister added.